| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about Weblog • Archive • Cutedge by: Bernard Teo
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Fri 10 Jun 2005 "He who's not busy being born, is busy dying"Category : Commentary/busybeingborn.txt "He who's not busy being born, is busy dying". That's Bob Dylan, and I wrote about this sometime back in connection with a book I was reading then, "The Creative Economy - How People Make Money from Ideas" by John Howkins. I picked up Andy Grove's book, "Only the Paranoid Survive" from my book shelf, turned to the back cover and, whaddaya know, there's a blurb from Steve Jobs. (This book came out, let me see, in 1996.) "This book is about one super-important concept. You must learn about Strategic Inflection Points, because sooner or later you are going to live through one." - Steve Jobs, CEO, Pixar Animation Studios. So, what is this Strategic Inflection Point of which he speaks? From the jacket notes : "Grove's contribution to business thinking concerns a new way of measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads - the moment when massive change occurs and all bets are off (italics added). The success you had the day before is gone, destroyed by unforeseen changes that hit like a stage-six rapid. Grove calls such moments Strategic Inflection Points, and he has lived through several. When SIPs hit, all rules of business shift fast, furiously, and forever. SIPs can be set off by anything: mega-competition, an arcane change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology. "Yet in a watchful leader's hand, SIPs can be an ace. Managed right, a company can turn a SIP into a positive force to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever." Apple is heading into one such tornado. And Steve Jobs looks like he's prepared. Wed 08 Jun 2005 Never a Dull MomentCategory : Commentary/Macintels.txt Macintels! This reminds me why I'm a Mac user. We never have a dull moment. I'm actually looking forward to it. Ralph of ApfelgerŸchte asked me what I think. This is what I wrote : "I think it's a good move because it's good that Apple has two chip suppliers, or even three, and the OS is processor-independent, so why not take advantage of it anyway. And I believe that it'll turn out to be transparent, at the end, to the end users because Apple's strength is, of course, that it has always taken responsibility for building the whole box and defining the user experience, and it'll be just another Mac even if it has Intel Inside, and we wouldn't even know unless we go and take a look. Of course, I'm speaking as a Cocoa programmer and I see mostly good and I'm looking forward to it." While Apple's switching processor may not make much of difference to either IBM or Freescale (but they couldn't scale!), as they have been quick to report, or even to Intel, as some analysts have suggested because of "the tiny sliver of marketshare that Apple has", I'm thinking beyond the numbers. Of the Intel that believes "only the paranoid survive". On the one end, we have a chip-maker that's proud of its ability to constantly innovate its way out of dead-ends (remember RISC vs CISC?). And on the other, we have a computer maker who'll drink the innovations like water from a fire hose. We live in interesting times. Mon 06 Jun 2005 Collect All 3Category : Commentary/CollectAll3.txt I remember being amused by Apple's print advert of the original iMac - the iMac with five colours - and its sub-head, "Collect All 5". So, now, I've got a web page each for Postfix Enabler, DNS Enabler, and WebServer Monitor. Go ahead and collect all three, please. I built all three because I've needed them. WebServer Monitor allowed me to track how people buying Postfix Enabler were traversing through the web site. And that's how we noticed why they weren't seeing the serial number page, even though we've had that page up from day one so they'd get their serial number immediately. It's a short step from knowing why to knowing how to solve it, and I've been able to sleep a lot better now without worrying that someone's paid and not getting their serial number. And it's amazing seeing downloads of DNS Enabler going to places as far away as Peru and New Zealand. (I'd like to go where those bits are going.) DNS Enabler has been invaluable when we're doing our testing, when we need to mock up, say, how one mail server could authenticate and relay mail through another. So they're all available for download and they can be improved no end. I may be able to make DNS Enabler and WebServer Monitor so good that people would be willing to pay for them eventually, but I'm out of this Shareware thing. It's either going to be free or it's going be commercial. In-between is stupid. Believe me, I know. Sat 04 Jun 2005 LifeCategory : Commentary/life.txt I'm re-reading this book from my library - "Unleashing The Killer App" by Larry Downs and Chunka Mui - and, on Chapter 5, I see this quote from Frederick Winslow Taylor : "Life which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth living." It's so true. Thu 02 Jun 2005 DNS Enabler for TigerCategory : Technology/DNSEnablerForTiger.txt I've been working on a DNS Enabler that will work with Tiger, and yet remain compatible with Panther. It's version 1.1 and it's now ready for download. I've written some earlier notes on how to use it, here. And you can download it from here.
Tue 24 May 2005 Postfix Enabler 1.1.6 ReleasedCategory : Technology/PFETiger116Released.txt From the release notes : Version 1.1.6 Release Notes 1.1.6 24th May 2005. Conforms to Tiger's new way of launching system services, using launchd. Use the Red Cross (in the top left hand corner of the Postfix Enabler window) to re-enable the Enable Postfix button. Clicking Enable Postfix now will shift you over to launchd. POP and IMAP services launch more reliably now even on 10.4.1. Will continue to launch services in the "old" way on Panther. This release also fixes the problem where a PowerBook refuses to go to sleep when running Postfix. Also, the serial number field is now more forgiving of leading and trailing spaces. Tiger launches a lot faster than Panther, even on an iMac that I had been testing on. POP and IMAP launch more reliably now after reboot. There was one case when the IMAP service couldn't be contacted from another machine, but the service did get launched on the server, so it could be a network glitch somewhere. Other than that, it was a pleasure to work with the new Launch Daemon mechanism. Mon 23 May 2005 Postfix Enabler works with launchdCategory : Technology/PFEwithLaunchd.txt I've got a new version of Postfix Enabler (version 1.1.6) that conforms to Tiger's new LaunchDaemons mechanism for launching system services. Yet, it's still backwards-compatible with Panther. Launchd is a very nice idea. It's a lot neater to work with (than the old pre-Tiger mechanisms). And I can now throw away that kludge I used to get POP and IMAP running after a reboot in 10.4.1. It's worth it cleaning up the code to work with launchd. The Mac starts up so fast now. That's, I think, one of the objectives of launchd - to simplify and speed up the start up process. And I can stop clashing with that org.postfix.master.plist entry for control over Postfix because I'm using it now myself. This version continues to work with Panther. It does things the old way when it's on Panther. But when it finds itself on Tiger, it will use launchd. But you'll need to use the Red Cross to re-enable the Enable Postfix button, so that you can click on it to get you over to launchd. Also, in this version, there's the fix to the Postfix master.cf file that will allow a PowerBook to go to sleep when it's running Postfix. Plus a few other fixes to cut down on support calls, e.g., the serial number field is now more forgiving if you leave spaces before or after the serial number. And the Enable SSL check-box won't be active until you have created the necessary SSL certificates. I'll be testing it for maybe another day. If anybody needs it, please let me know. Thu 19 May 2005 Connections and Inflection PointsCategory : Commentary/inflectionPoint.txt Okay, now that the dust has settled from the Tiger 10.4.1 release (I hope I'm not speaking too soon), I'm tracing the origins of the new LaunchDaemons mechanism in Tiger. A good place to start is, I think, John Siracusa's Ars Technica article. But mid-way through the reading I was struck by this single line : "If I were working on a Unix-based operating system, I'd be borrowing ideas and code from Apple like there's no tomorrow." Just last week I was reading this straight from Robert X Cringely's pulpit : "Bill Gates deliberately blabbed some details about the next xBox game system, which is to be officially announced this week ... that xBox 360 will perform many functions that currently require a home computer ... What message does this send to Microsoft's hardware OEM customers that make home computers? What is Microsoft saying to Dell, HP, Gateway, and others? For all the customer bullying we saw proof of in the Department of Justice's anti- trust case against Microsoft, one thing the kids in Redmond never did was propose to undercut their hardware OEMs by building a Microsoft PC. But now that's precisely what Gates has proposed, and it is coming in time for this Christmas. Then, there's the usual doom and gloom about Apple, "iTunes to lose its market dominance - report" : "Apple is about to make the same mistake that they made in the PC world. They also lost their lead they had with computers in the 70s and 80s." And, to keep you wondering where all this is heading, I've been thinking a lot lately about why it may not be a bad idea to go work in China. But, bear with me, I think I can link all these together. It's commonly believed that there were two ways towards market dominance in the Computer Wars - Microsoft's Way and Apple's Way - and Apple lost. Apple's Way was about building the whole widget. Microsft's Way was about building the platform so that other people (the whole wide world) could come and build their own widgets. Microsoft won, Apple lost, game over, and ever shall be. But wait a minute. Mac users (overwhelmingly) love their Macs. PC users (generally) barely tolerate their PCs. So, what's wrong with this picture? I think there's another way to look at this and that is to consider the possibility that Apple had the right idea and the better way. But they lost because of poor execution. The Microsoft Way did not have a divine right to win. Wired : "How did Windows become ubiquitous?" Steve Jobs (in the Wired Interview) : "A force of self-interest throughout the industry made Windows ubiquitous. Compaq and all these different vendors made Windows ubiquitous. They didn't know how to spell software, but they wanted to put something on their machines. That made Windows ubiquitous." Now what's going on at iTunes is really a re-match - Microsoft's Way vs Apple's Way, again. But this time, I don't think Microsoft's going to win. One significant ally that Microsft had in the force of self-interest - the world's IT departments - is not going to get a jersey to play this time round. The more the machines shrink and the cheaper they become, the less relevance IT departments have as a force for deciding what's acceptable and what's not. I believe that Microsoft's way, which sounds good in MBA-theory but works shoddily in practice, doesn't really serve the consumer's interest. The key thing about Apple's way is not that they build the whole widget, but that they take responsibility for the whole widget. That's the key to the whole Mac experience. In the world according to Microsoft, only one company can hold the ring to rule them all, while it's universally agreed that Apple, in the face of all the other players' self-interest, will never be able to rule the whole market. But whose side are we on, anyway? As consumers, we should only be concerned that the products we buy work as best as they can be crafted. Apple's way doesn't preclude other people going along the same route and drinking from the same well. If Apple succeed, by having so many of us throwing money their way, that will force the other players to consider that it makes good business sense to take responsibility for building the whole widget, after all. Especially as they can drink from the same Open Source well. So, if Microsoft cave in and build their own Microsoft PC, shouldn't Lenovo and all the others think about using Linux rather than Windows to build their own. After all, Apple had shown the way - i.e., "copy like mad from what Apple is doing" - use all these Open Source stuff but add the critical value by thinking through hardware and software design. Taiwanese companies like Asustek "spit out iPods and Mini Macs for Apple" from their factories in China. There may come a time, soon, when they realise that they ought to design, build, and sell the whole widget on their own. After all, walking the streets of Shanghai, you can see that the Chinese are believing that they're good enough to sell the shoes and jackets they make for Timberland and all, under their own brand name. Much of what we have in the Mac today are Open Source stuff - Unix, Postfix, Apache, PHP, OpenSSL, and on and on. Even Objective-C. And there's a GNUStep Project. Like Cocoa? You can build on it. Or at least starting from the Foundation Classes. The Chinese companies can "do an Apple", at least theoretically. What's hard is to have the same genius for innovation, for hardware and software integration, and the sheer guts to be able to hold on to a dream. That's the hard part. But you don't get paid good money for doing the easy things. World TimeCategory : Commentary/WorldTime.txt This is usually the quietest time of the day, in terms of the mail coming through my mail box.
Is it because it's going to be evening in Japan and Australia, still too early in Europe, people are sleeping in the Americas, and nobody uses Macs in India, Kazakhstan, and Iran? Wed 18 May 2005 A Workflow that looks like it may work. Plus other thingsCategory : Technology/workflow.txt I've added an SSL cert (try it) to our web site so that we can help guide people who paid for Postfix Enabler back to the page that contains their serial number. Until we did, a dialog box often pops up that interferes with the process. The dialog box helpfully explains that you're going back from a secure page (PayPal's) to a non-secure page (ours) but we're finding that many people click "Cancel" at this point and totally miss their serial number. Adding the ability to serve secure pages of our own allows us to keep the whole transaction in secure ("https") mode, at least until the serial number has been safely delivered. We're also sending the serial numbers out via two routes over e-mail, just in case one fails. About 5% of mail servers will reject mail coming from a dynamic IP address. This may be OK in correspondence but even that 5% would be fatal in real-time e-commerce. Even one irate user who didn't get his serial number is one unhappy customer too many. There are various ways to solve this, including using a smart host and routing it through another mail server that has a static IP address. But the long term solution is to have a static IP address of our own, at which point a lot more fun things get to be possible to do. But we'll come to it when we come to it. I'm glad that this is stabilising. That cut down a lot of support calls. In the first few days since Tiger launched, I was swamped with support calls. And so I added that note about using the Red Cross in Postfix Enabler (to give the application a chance to force-check through all the configuration). I featured that prominently in the Postfix Enabler web page, in Version Tracker and in MacUpdate. And I was amazed at its immediate effect in reducing the chatter. What I learned over the last two weeks is that designing a McDonald's-like workflow involves a blend of both the high-tech and the low-tech. I couldn't have done it without Hai Hwee's very fine system to channel all the transactions through. But it needs a touch of the human - to survey the kinks in the system and decide what needs to be done next, and to be able to provide something as simple as instructions written in good plain English, inserted at the right places in the workflow. Machines can't do that. Only humans can. I've always been interested in thinking about ways to use technology to drive a business in all its facets - communicating with a user base, offering goods and services, delivering the products on time, providing support, and accounting for the flow of money. And, in particular, about exploiting the Mac as a technology platform, for which I feel there is a vast hidden potential. Doing this - this web site and getting mail from the people who've downloaded the stuff I've put up - has put me in touch with a lot of people who're thinking along the same line. There's a whole mass of people who're using their Macs for their businesses. You don't see it in Apple's advertisements about iPods and all that stupid talk about keeping the user base in "silos" as one Apple guy here propounded. It's a huge market - this business market - waiting to be served. Tue 17 May 2005 Postfix Enabler 1.1.5 for OS X 10.4.1Category : Technology/PFE115Released.txt I've released an update so that Postfix Enabler will work with the latest OS X 10.4.1 system update, while continuing to work on 10.4 and 10.3. Release Notes : If, after upgrading to OS X Tiger 10.4.1, you find that POP3 and IMAP services do not launch on system restart, click on the Red Cross (in the top left hand corner of the Postfix Enabler window) to re-enable the Enable Postfix button. Clicking Enable Postfix will fix the startup items so that all the mail services will work properly again. Mac OS X 10.4.1 - UpdateCategory : Technology/1041TigerUpdate.txt There seems to be a timing problem that causes the POP3 and IMAP services to be launched sporadically after each restart. Sometimes, one, two, all, or none of these services come back up after a restart. I can solve this by finding a place to restart xinetd services very much later in the launch process. I can do this by moving the Postfix StartupItems folder to /Library/StartupItems from its current place in /System//Library/StartupItems and adding a line to the startup script to restart xinetd services. This seems to work - across both restart and awake from sleep. I'm quite happy to do this because I hate putting things into /System etc... I've got a decision point here - do I go with the new LaunchDaemons way or stick to xinetd? I've tried to maintain backwards compatibility with Panther so you could use the same program on Panther and Tiger. And I would need more time to really understand the LaunchDaemons mechanism before I foist my implementation on all those people using Postfix Enabler now. So I'll stick with xinetd for a while longer, so long as I can find a way to work around this latest problem. I'll fix my application and see if I can release it. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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